Three and a half years ago, a small group of flooring professionals realized there was a need to help specialty flooring retailers market themselves properly online to compete with the big boxes.

In response to today’s new tech-savvy consumer, FloorForce embarked on a complete overhaul of its platform, and in early September will be introducing FloorForce 3.0. According to John Weller, vice president of marketing, what makes this new platform unique is that it is fully responsive. “You do not need a mobile website. Everything about this website positions itself to work on all the newest devices, iPad, tablet, whatever it might be, it contorts itself so that everything is visible on the device,” Weller said.

FloorForce 3.0 also includes Shop at Home and Showroom Appointment Scheduler which allows the consumer to put products into a shopping cart, click a button to open a calendar and then make a shop at home appoint, where the samples will be brought to their home, or an in-store visit. The scheduler will then sync the appointment to the dealers Outlook or Google calendar. “Its taking the appointment scheduler and the product catalog and melding it together in a whole new way to give the consumer an interaction that is unique to the entire industry,” Weller said.

The company has also completely rebuilt its system for putting in-stock items on sale — the new Click and Play Product Catalog Management System. “The retailer can now basically be at Starbucks and take in-stock products and put them on sale or mark them on clearance, but we simplified it now to where they need absolutely no computer training or knowledge to be able to do that,” Weller said.

Call Tracking has also been added to 3.0. Weller said that dealer’s can now see how a customer found their website, where they were on the website when they called and then hear the actual phone call. “So now the dealers can see their analytics… and also see how productive and efficient they are at closing the sale from the website,” he explained. “If [retailers] can figure out internet market and get themselves positioned correctly, they will take back the entire industry.”